Warning! Flaming Hot Take Ahead: Thanksgiving is the least musical holiday. Apart from one very long “song” that I don’t think anyone under the age of 40 is aware of, when you think of Thanksgiving, no music springs to mind. Can you think of a song that even mentions Thanksgiving? If you say The Cranberries are a Thanksgiving band I will come to your house and make you pay for what you done said.

In order to satisfy my own curiosity I had to see if The Cranberries were a “the” band or just Cranberries. Some bands will try to pull that on you. I’m glad I did because otherwise I’d never know Google’s opinion on the matter. Burt Reynolds, huh?

And as long as we’re being bold, let me say that since I predicted a 40-seat net gain in Congress and came pretty close, I am back in the prognostication game: It’s going to be Beto.

Thankful for the year coming to an end. Terrible year, wife diagnosed with lymphoma, mom died of undiagnosed cancer that had been in her body long enough to have spread her bones, . The one good life event for me – I got let go from job (I was leaving at year end, this way I got six months severance plus unemployment – 3 months less pay, 10 months less work).

Looking forward to better times next year, some long trips for me and wife, Panama Canal cruise in Jan, hopefully China or Japan in the fall. Also, lots of Congressional hearings and MUELLER!

I’ll confess to being wrong about political newcomers and sensations in the past. I thought Obama was too inexperienced in politics to make a good president. He was far better in reality than my reservations allowed.

That said, I think it’s a bad sign for our political future for flavor-of-the-day candidates to dominate our elections. The challenges our country faces are complex and we can’t let every damn thing become a wedge issue. We need some consensus to craft workable solutions, even where ONE party (ahem, glancing to the right) has committed itself to obstruction and extremism.

I’d far rather have a president who is bland and boring AF, but experienced in moving legislation and twisting arms to get the needed votes, than someone who excites the base with great sound bites.

Yeah, I know. My way sounds terribly centrist and it’s probably a recipe for defeat. In the times we live in, image is everything. I just can’t convince myself that we’re not taking crazy risks with untested candidates.

An Irish friend of mine was startled to realize we actually do eat turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. She thought it was some sort of cliché or something. Then she was disappointed to hear we didn’t go around the table saying what we were thankful for.

“Over the River and Through the Woods” is a Thanksgiving song, but I think nowadays people associate it more with Christmas.

SRSLY?

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.
….

Over the river, and through the wood—
now Grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Even if the song didn’t explicitly mention Thanksgiving, who associates pumpkin pie with Christmas? ;-)

Wikipedia says this is the real original poem, or at least the start of it. But we always sang (heard?) it as “Grandmother’s house,” maybe because we were short on grandfathers. One of mine died when my mother (his daughter) was two, and the other died when I was quite young.

I am thankful that I have an impressive ‘resume’ this time, and should be able to find an agent and a new publisher without too much trouble. I am thankful I had relatives to catch me and I’m not homeless because my publisher won’t pay me my royalties. I am thankful that I have a solid idea for the next book that will let me use phrases like ‘sawed-off gauss rifle.’

Most people associate Over the River and Through the Woods with Thanksgiving because they sing it at the end of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. Although has Charlie Brown notes, his grandmother actually lives in a condominium.

I could be really happy with O’Rourke. Either with him or Kamala Harris or Chris Murphy. My real fantasy would be a ticket of Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings, but I don’t think the country is anywhere near ready for that yet.

I’m still of the opinion Beto should get into the Senate from Texas first. I could see him giving it a go against Cornyn and actually succeeding this time around Cornyn is Senate leadership who hasn’t done much of anything for Texas. Straight ticket voting is gone in Texas. I really think he’s destined to be a Senator first. And he’s still quite young yet. There’s plenty of time to get him to the White House.

@SenyorDave: Ouch. Stay strong. Most of us have had at least some of that, although few all of that at once. My worst was losing Mum AND the job AND the house (Great Recession Days). The Commentariat was there for me even though they didn’t know it.

@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think of the many Christmases I spent in Barrington and how my mother in law would make us do that stuff. One year she and my mother got in cahoots and made us do and even worse one.

In order to satisfy my own curiosity I had to see if The Cranberries were a “the” band or just Cranberries

I recall somewhere some “Internet wisdom” about the original name being What The Cranberries Saw or some such, with however many multiple interpretations you might like to come up with having already been thought of by the band. The Cranberries always seemed more like a Good Friday sound rather than Thanksgiving: all the angst and disillusionment and none of the hope.

The two “non-The” bands that always surprised me by being that way were Buggles and Eurythmics.

As for music for the holiday, Thanksgiving always seemed like that last big breath before hours and hours of caroling for Christmas: you needed the day of relative silence to soak up enough oxygen to sing nonstop for the next six weeks.

Over the river and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple gray!
Leap over the ground like a hunting hound
For this is Thanksgiving Day!
Over the river and through the wood
Oh how the wind doth blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go!

Grandmother’s wheelchair is sitting in the corner
We all sure love her, but the little ones avoid her
Cause she’s gray-haired and wrinkled and her burden looks heavy
Ninety years of survival can look awful scary
Papa’s building something and has since history
But what he’s building is still a mystery
It’s big and it’s twisting and shaped convoluted
It don’t have a function but you better salute it
And it will never be finished but I guess that’s the point
It just gives him a filter and psychological ointment
He woke up real early but he’s late for his appointment
And I sure wish that I had smoked me a joint
It’s Thanksgiving and Jesus, I’m thankful
For abundance and bounty and a big tall stiff drink-full
And the love of your mother and the love of mine too
Thanksgiving’s almost over and Christmas is soon
Mama is trying to live in the present
Don’t let him have a heart attack before I pay off the presents
Granddaddy’s gone but she still feels his presence
He tried to call but he didn’t leave a message
It’s Thanksgiving and Jesus I’m thankful…
So put the food on the table and Papa says a blessing
They’re cutting up some turkey and gobbling some dressing
My Aunt’s praising Palin and my niece loves Obama
My uncle came to dinner wearing his pajamas
Thank God for the filter that enables some distance
From the screaming and crying and the needs of assistance
You wonder why I drink and curse the holidays
Blessed be my family from 300 miles away
It’s Thanksgiving and Jesus I’m thankful…

I didn’t get a start on cooking until 11:30am, and I’m only just now in the beginnings of cooking (put the stuffing in, have a pie crust blind-baking, about to throw in GB casserole). I’m not even making a turkey (I just threw some seasoned chicken breasts on top of the stuffing). After that, I just have to mix up pumpkin filling, steam some veggies, and whip up some hollandaise sauce. *Then* I can finally eat today and binge-watch some Prime shows.

I was taught “Over The River And Through The Woods” as definitely a and only a Thanksgiving song, many years before Charlie Brown debuted on TV. It’s also a cold-weather and sleigh song, which will seem Just Wrong to people who don’t live in the north, but we often had significant snow cover for Thanksgiving in those days.
Hurrah ! for the pumpkin pie!

I spent the morning dry-brining the bird and constructing the dressing and getting started on the side dishes (fresh steamed green beans tossed with garlic and butter and a bit of asiago, scalloped corn, candied sweet potatoes under marshallow because my granddaughter would be desolated without it).

I think I’ll go dig out the serving dishes and construct the crudities/pickles/olives intro, and then it’s time for a shower.

Dinner is almost finished, as soon as my two children, who have won cooking competitions together, finish their insanely complex version of a green been casserole without any mushroom soup. but with wild mushrooms, and with cippolline onions instead of good old French’s french fried in a can. I’m sure it’ll be delicious, they both really are amazing cooks, but I’m getting hungry.

I made the kids watch the “Alice’s Restaurant” movie one Thanksgiving, and what a mistake that was.
It turned out that my good memories were mostly from Arlo’s performance of the song, because it’s a pretty dreadful movie in a number of ways. The kids were baffled but patient; I was mortified.

At the time, before the LP had hit the record stores, the only way to hear “Alice’s Restaurant” was to gather ’round the radio, tune it to the hip progressive rock FM station and wait until the stroke of midnight. Very shortly after, they would play it – nightly. DJ was Alison Steele, The Nightbird.

Presume that was because midnight marked the time when there were fewer ad spots sold per hour.

@noncarborundum: that’s exactly the song that instantly popped into my head too. I think we used to sing it in elementary school. Otherwise, the only other song is “Come. Ye thankful people come, raise the song of harvest home”, which I think is another elementary classic, along with making turkeys out of construction paper.

To be honest, if the alternative is Napoleorange, I’d rather have a pile of my dog’s excrement as president, so of course I’d gladly take bland and boring AF over what we’ve got right now.

That said, bland and boring AF candidates don’t get elected to the presidency – see Romney, Mitt, McCain, John, Kerry, John, Gore, Al, and Dole, Bob. Hell, even Hillary Clinton was “boring” in comparison to Trump, insofar as she was emotionally stable, competent, and not prone to childish outbursts.

The candidate with the stronger personality (“stronger” does not necessarily mean “better”) almost always wins the presidential election. Trump is a repugnant malevolent unqualified clown, but the one thing he could never really be accused of is being “vanilla”. For all the wrong reasons, he’ll be one of the more recognized presidents of the 21st century (just as Nixon was in the 20th century).

I sure as shit don’t want someone like Avenatti to be the nominee, but I also don’t want someone who is going to put the less politically engaged voters to sleep on the stump.

There is also an accompanying official podcast hosted by Mark Evan Jackson (he plays Shawn). He gets a great mix of the actors, writers, and behind-the-scenes folks like the costume designers and animal trainers. Make sure you Google for the official podcast, though, because there are a lot of fan ones.

Our Thanksgiving was lovely, peaceful, and tasty. We decided a few years ago we could do without the cooking/family agitas. So it’s my father, my sister and her husband, my BIL’s mother, and I at a restaurant that makes excellent food. My Thanksgiving meal was an appetizer of chicken pesto flatbread, caramelized scallops over sweet potato risotto with grilled lemons and lightly steamed caulilini. Desert was miniature key lime pie in a shot glass.

Fingers crossed because am trying out making cornbread in the super duper bread machine. Added some coarsely chopped jalapeños to the recipe. Needed to dig out the instructions to confirm how to use the Cake setting, which the recipe recommends over the Bread setting in this case.

And the neighbor next door just now fired up his lawnmower. Not a cool move on a major holiday, dude.

@Emma: Ours was lovely also. Originally it was suppose to be just my SIL and myself, but then my son and his wife didn’t want to miss the annual combing through the newspaper ads for things we won’t buy so they came over. The only thing close to politics we discussed was how much I’m enjoying Michelle’s book.
I’m thankful.

Tomorrow I plan on starting and finishing my X-mas shopping so for that I’m thankful. I do plan on going to Kohl’s but after seven when the first wave left. The rest is from Amazon for my soon to be born grandson.

@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Thick as a Brick? A Passion Play? Then once you get to the CD era you find some even longer ones. I think Brian Eno and Mike Oldfield both did hour-long tracks, and there are some even longer tracks I can cite by obscure metal acts, some of which wouldn’t even fit on CDs (L’Acephale and Corrupted collaborating with Asunder both have tracks in excess of ninety minutes long).

Beto is the first white guy I could see myself voting for in the primary, but it’s far too early to make up my mind.

As for other bands you’d expect to have “the” in their names that don’t: Pixies, Grateful Dead, Talking Heads. The latter even hung a lampshade on it with their live album The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads.

As Amazon’s Black Friday has been running all this week, did a modicum of shopping there yesterday. Mostly to avoid Friday, when the rush puts a strain on their site, which can and does sometimes become glitchy when it is inundated.

Finished with dinner and the duty phone call with the parents. Worried that my brother failed to call both my parents and me as well. My spouse will soon do his duty phone calls. I will hopefully manage to go through my fabric stash before bedtime tonight and get some online shopping done as well.

@NotMax: So far the car seat and the baby carrier I marked have not budged in price. I’m checking Amazon and buybuybaby. So odd to just buy baby stuff for the grandchild who is arriving in January. I’d love to buy something more personal, but that’s what they want.

Over the river and thru the woods,
Trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting hound,
For this is Thanksgiving Day!

Hard to say it’s a Christmas song when the lyrics say it’s Thanksgiving!

If you don’t remember the verses that specifically mention Thanksgiving day, I can see why one would associate it with Christmas. You’ve got to be pretty far north nowadays to have even a decent chance of snow on the ground on Thanksgiving, let alone enough for a horse to pull a sled full of people over:

the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

So odd to just buy baby stuff for the grandchild who is arriving in January. I’d love to buy something more personal, but that’s what they want.

Good on you for getting them the stuff they need. Everybody likes to give cutesy personal stuff for babies…..and then you still have to go spend a boatload on the basics because no one wanted to get you practical stuff. Can you tell I remember that and am bitter?

@Suzanne: My son is tall and his gift is going to be the onya baby carrier because they seem to adapt to size He works for a company that has great benefits but he only has two weeks of paternity leave. The DIL has 3 months.

@JPL: Each and every one of my, count them, ten cousins proclaim that my sister’s “baby baskets” are the best baby shower gift ever. She buys a pretty oversize basket and fills it with extras of all the basics, from bottles to bibs to tiny cute everyday t-shirts. Hypoallergenic soaps and powder. Then she wraps them in ribbon.

As one of them told me “church-going outfits for newborns are all well and good but at 3am and the kid just barfed I need a clean sleep shirt and diaper!”

@SenyorDave: I really hope you and your wife have a much better year in the next one. We had two cancer scares in our house this year; my wife, on her back and our daughter, on her upper leg. Both were removed, our daughter’s as a precaution as the cells were “abnormal” and she is a melanoma survivor.

You and your wife are in my thoughts and have my best wishes. Happy Thanksgiving to all. :)

@Steeplejack: Thanks. I haven’t listened to it since college, so the memory is dim. Mostly I remember the repeating refrain and the idea of a massacre and hippiedom. But my neurons appear to have never captured the “Thanksgiving” keyword .

[. . .] your brother in law feels the need to concealed carry at the dinner table [. . .].

My condolences. That is seriously pathetic. And I say that as someone whose RWNY brother in Las Vegas has multiple handguns strategically deployed around his house, e.g., drawer in the guest bathroom, bottom drawer in the bedside table, under a throw pillow on the couch (I almost sat on that one once). That’s not all of them, just the ones I found in a cursory five-minute search. And that’s not including the shotgun he had leaning against the wall by his bed. (I put that under the bed while I was housesitting.) I don’t think he has a concealed-carry permit, but if not that’s probably because he is a misanthrope who doesn’t go out much. (To the benefit of everybody, it goes without saying.)

One of my friends at work has a hilarious tale of a Thanksgiving dinner with his side of the family, which his wife wanted to do because she didn’t think they could possibly be as white trash as he had told her.

And then they dropped the N-word at the dinner table. In reference to then-President Obama.

On the bright side, they never had to spend another holiday with that side of the family again.

It’s an illness—some attempt to shore up fragile, threatened masculinity and to combat the “monsters from the id” that can’t really be identified. And in my brother’s case it’s an adjunct to his lifelong struggle with major depression.

Beto has not only lost his senate bid, but he’s lost one of his best qualities; his not-Ted Cruzishness. It was such an important quality, everybody looked past the i-wanna-ice-cream ants-in-the-pants-dance thing he does. Nobody’s getting elected prez with moves like that. Gonna need to step it up.